Archive for June, 2011

Travelling on the bus to school yesterday, I had not long boarded and was standing patiently in the aisle when one of my students, a boy in the 2nd grade who was seated to my right, tapped me on the arm and said something initially unintelligible. I gave the lad a patient “I don’t know what the fuck you just said” kind of frown and he began excitedly repeating the word whilst gesturing at his crotch

“Jipper! Jipper!”
My fly was down. I thanked the observant young man and acknowledged the hilarity that this prompted amongst his companions (many of my students ride this same bus). Later in the day, whilst teaching another 2nd grade class of kids, none of whom had been on that bus, I was greeted by a beaming boy who pointed at me and exclaimed, “David teacher! jipper! ha ha ha ha!”

This morning I climbed on the bus to instantly see the same boy from yesterday. I reassured him that I was in a far more meticulous state of dress today although I noticed that, upon seeing me, he immediately glanced at my crotch. I have to hand it to the kid; he only has my best interests at heart.

I had intended my next K-Pop entry to be a sprawling, darkly satirical piece that alluded to the Korean War but that promptly collapsed under the weight of its own ambition two days ago and so I opted for an easier, low-brow option instead.

E.Via (real name, Lee Ok-joo) is purported to be Korea’s fastest female rapper, officially clocking in at 160 BPM according to allkpop.com. Sceptical old curmudgeon that I am, I can’t help but be unimpressed by this claim, having long suspected that rapping in Korean is considerably easier than in English, given the vast amount of words in hangul which rhyme. Why, just the other day I managed to practically rap my ass off having dinner with friends when I effortlessly rhymed the Korean word for “deer” (saseum) with the Korean word for “breast” (kaseum) and then came right off the fucking chain to end with the phrase “gas ’em”, for good measure. But I digress. Despite lacking an overtly sexualized image herself, E.Via’s tunes have come under fire for their content on more than one occasion. Her debut album featured a single entitled ‘Oppa, can I do it?’ which appears to have been a not-so-subtle song involving a girl frankly asking a guy if she can fuck him, replete with lascivious Korean slang terms and orgasmic moaning in the vocal to drive the point home. This song was subsequently banned from Korean TV and radio broadcast and the album hit with a 19+ age rating. A cursory investigation into the English lyrics reveals little of note beyond the line “can you get it up?” which an alternative translation has as the more innocuous “can you get it started?”, the wider sexual content allegedly throughout the song likely being lost in translation.

Ready yourselves my poppets, for the sequel to The Human Centipede has not only been completed, it has already been shown to the British Board of Film Censors (now known as the British Board of Film Classification) and, in short, they have decided that this film can fuck right off. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) has been rejected outright for classification by the BBFC, meaning it cannot be legally released or supplied anywhere in the UK.

As a dedicated, uh, ‘Pede-phile, I think it appropriate that I should endeavour to explain this situation as best I can to the uninitiated and, alas, there are still plenty of pedestrians out there who have not yet taken the plunge with the ‘Pede. The original film by Dutch filmmaker Tom Six came scurrying and burrowing into the helpless, twitching subconscious of many of us with its brilliantly revolting premise, that a mad surgeon sews people’s bodies together mouth to anus, however, The Human Centipede wasn’t a particularly graphic or visceral gore flick. It largely stayed its hand when it came to delivering on the visual horror and surprised many, including yours truly, by being carried largely by the wonderfully twisted, black-comedy performance of Dieter Laser. In short, it was not as bad as it sounded.

Released in 2008 and marking the directorial debut of Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin, The Chaser is a Korean crime thriller loosely based on the real-life case surrounding notorious Korean serial killer Yoo Young-cheol. The film enjoyed considerable commercial and critical success in the domestic Korean market and earned numerous awards for the cast and crew involved. Although it starts with a brilliant and solid opening act that is unflinching and gripping, the feature descends into a frustrating affair with a credibility-stretching plot that limps toward a crudely manipulative climax.

Joong-ho (Kim Yoon-seok) is an ex-cop turned perpetually pissed-off pimp who seems to have lost a couple of call girls he “owns”. He suspects a rival pimp is taking his girls and selling them on and, discovering a phone number clue that leads him to the culprit, he soon apprehends the shifty and sinister Young-min (Ha Jeong-woo). However, there is a lot more to Young-min’s nocturnal activities than Joong-ho initially suspects and the last girl dispatched to one of his calls, Mi-jin (Seo Yeong-hee), has also gone missing. With Young-min in custody spinning bizarre tales to a largely indifferent police force and the possibility of Mi-jin still being alive, Joong-ho has only 12 hours to find the missing girl before the police release their suspect for lack of evidence.